Basalt Series

Kovats’ sculptural practice has been based on an exploration of landscape and how landscapes are made, looking to geological narratives to better understand the processes of both the formation and the erosion of landscape. In the ‘Basalt’ series, Kovats’ methodology takes several different forms of activity, including a principally sculptural process of modeling and casting rock formations of geological interest. These are then housed or located into the formal white cubes of a plinth. The plinth acts as a framing device for the landscape, simultaneously supporting the rock face and having its solidity challenged or erroded by the rock face. These works simulate geological processes in a sculptural way, effecting landslides or erosion, or erruptions in material such as clay or wax, and could be seen in some form to function as models of landscape processes. The cartographic conventions established to describe both deep time and space used in geological mapmaking also inform the works. Kovats seeks to develop a language of landscape that employs a mathematical principle based on the microscopic mineralogical formation of landscape, literally putting the landscape under the microscope to understand its formation on this scale. The work was exhibited in the solo exhibition ‘Offshore’, Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall and at the Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno (2004), supported by The Henry Moore Foundation and the Arts Council, with publication (text by Charles Darwent). Group exhibitions include ‘Art at the Rockface. The Fascination of Stone’, Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Norwich; Millennium Galleries, Sheffield, (ISBN 0 90310 179 3). ‘Cited in New Art From London’, Thames and Hudson (ISBN 050028606X) and ‘New Art On View’, Scala (ISBN 1 85759 443 6), and (with Mariele Neudecker) the exhibition’Salvator Rosa: Wild Lanscapes at Compton verney House’ (2005)